It is universally accepted that great, great grandma’s cast iron is the best. That is because they had a hard carbon seasoning that is as good as or better than Teflon. Seasoning is carbon, pure slippery carbon – think graphite. Pure carbon does not mold, get rancid, smoke or create a sticky or gooey surface – think coal although it’s not pure carbon. All the impurities are gone from pure carbon. Animal products make one of the hardest carbons, much harder than vegetable products, although grape seed oil does get hard.
To create this nice smooth hard surface, g-g-grandma didn’t use Crisco or any vegetable oil. She used bacon grease, butter and lard. Frying chicken and fish in lard was great for building seasoning. She rendered steak fat to fry steak. Meat fats create a harder carbon more than vegetable oils or synthetic crap, which were fortunately not available back then. She was careful not to cook acidic foods that would eat the seasoning without adding some non-acidic foods such as meat or fat; and cleaned the pot or pan quickly after cooking.
She used bees wax to coat the pieces of cast iron she was going to store in warm humid conditions so it wouldn’t rust or mold. However, bees wax has a low smoking point and does not leave a hard carbon finish, so most of it would be removed before cooking. The rest of the cookware remained on the stove for daily cooking, washed and ready for another mess of bacon.
If you want cast iron like g-g-grandma had, do your homework and leave it on the stove to use a few times a week. Grilled cheese sandwiches, a mess of bacon or eggs in a Dutch oven? Of course. A few hundred meals and you will be on you way.
Learning about cast iron is a journey, not just a college course.
This is for information only; all questions are to be posed to Google.
Hilditch
To create this nice smooth hard surface, g-g-grandma didn’t use Crisco or any vegetable oil. She used bacon grease, butter and lard. Frying chicken and fish in lard was great for building seasoning. She rendered steak fat to fry steak. Meat fats create a harder carbon more than vegetable oils or synthetic crap, which were fortunately not available back then. She was careful not to cook acidic foods that would eat the seasoning without adding some non-acidic foods such as meat or fat; and cleaned the pot or pan quickly after cooking.
She used bees wax to coat the pieces of cast iron she was going to store in warm humid conditions so it wouldn’t rust or mold. However, bees wax has a low smoking point and does not leave a hard carbon finish, so most of it would be removed before cooking. The rest of the cookware remained on the stove for daily cooking, washed and ready for another mess of bacon.
If you want cast iron like g-g-grandma had, do your homework and leave it on the stove to use a few times a week. Grilled cheese sandwiches, a mess of bacon or eggs in a Dutch oven? Of course. A few hundred meals and you will be on you way.
Learning about cast iron is a journey, not just a college course.
This is for information only; all questions are to be posed to Google.
Hilditch
